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MTV at the St. Bernard Project

[Web Exclusive]

At 8 p.m. Jan. 20, MTV audiences will see a more real version of
The Real World through the eyes of residents of south Louisiana.
The cable network is shooting a live, international broadcast from
Chalmette on the night of Barack Obama's presidential inauguration,
where the St. Bernard Project, a nonprofit organization run by
TheGambit's New Orleanians of the Year Zack Rosenburg
and Liz McCartney, will complete renovations on one blighted dwelling
over the course of a nonstop, 24-hour overnight rebuilding push.

The Chalmette house, home to parish native Robin Albers
and her family, is the 168th structure gutted and restored by project
volunteers — who now total more than 10,000 people from all 50
states — over the past two-and-a-half years.

"We're going to sprint through the finish line to finish
up the family's home," Rosenburg says. "[The Albers] are emblematic of
who our clients are: people who were stable, independent and autonomous
before the storm who've had their lives turned upside down and, despite
working 12- to 14-hour days, still aren't back (in their homes)."

"We hope that by exposing the MTV audience to the kinds
of change their peers are affecting, and the enormous gains made by
volunteerism, viewers across the country and around the world will be
inspired to commit to powering change in their own communities," says
MTV Senior Vice President Ian Rowe.

The renovation marathon, titled "24 Hour Rebuild the
Dream" and presented by Entergy, American Airlines and the United Way
(The Gambit is a local sponsor), begins at 10 p.m. Monday
— Martin Luther King Jr. Day — and consists of four
six-hour shifts. Rosenburg says the event's symbolism and topicality
are manifold: "One, our clients have to live with this existence 24
hours a day, 365 days a year. Doing a 24-hour build recognizes that.
This is something that doesn't stop at the end of a St. Bernard Project
workday. It goes on, and it goes on, and it goes on.

"Second, this is a nonpartisan event," he continues.
"Merely because we have a new president doesn't mean that things will
change overnight. We want to highlight that even with around-the-clock
work, there's so much left to do. Third, these problems indeed are
solvable. We can finish a house. We will have rebuilt this house in
under three weeks."

Robin Albers' story, like many tales of displaced parish
residents trying desperately to return, contains struggles that are
hard to comprehend. Her mother's medical condition prevented an
evacuation in 2005. Stranded on the roof with her mother, sister,
brother and daughter, Albers helped to rescue three nearby families
from the rising 14-foot floodwaters. After the storm, the family
collected all its salvageable possessions in a U-Haul trailer; weeks
later, in the frenzy surrounding Hurricane Rita, it was stolen.

When asked how an Obama administration might best serve
Albers and the hundreds of other St. Bernard Project clients, Rosenburg
doesn't hesitate. "A jobs program that creates fair-wage,
benefit-protected labor that will get families home," he says. "We're
hoping to do this. That's absolutely the way to do it. And, of course,
we've got to make sure our levees work, or else this is all for
naught.

"New Orleans and St. Bernard [residents] are willing to work. It's
who they are; it's in their blood. People down here are workers. If
people didn't have to accept a lick of help, they wouldn't have asked
for it. So now is the time."